Your wife, your lovely one, has gone this Saturday to the temple to see sealed a young woman she shepherded through the Personal Progress program. You and your children pull a few BYU football videos to watch.

Saturday evening you bake. You promised your young men each a cheesecake if they watched all five sessions of conference. You don’t know how to make cheesecake. Your wife shepherds you through the recipes. You discover that cream cheese is expensive. You discover that cream cheese is nasty to knead. You make several large cheesecakes and cut them into smaller squares, nine squares for each.

Sunday morning your daughter asks why you have a bowie knife and your replica cavalry saber laid out on the table. You explain that it’s an object lesson. You will tell your young men about the Roman style of fighting in close order with short swords and the Gallic style of individual fighters in loose order with long swords. You will tell them to work together. You will quote Elder Dube on oxen pulling in the yoke. “Romans made a turtle with their shields,” your daughter informs you. “Good lesson, dad!”

You find out you are being released from working with the young men and called to the Elder’s Quorum.

On mistaken identity: I was once visiting a relative with toddler girls who were too young to remember me. I arrived while they were in bed, and by the time they woke, I was napping on the couch. I was much younger and had a heavy beard at the time.

I stirred from my nap to find two little girls eyeing me in considerable puzzlement. The older suddenly lit up in recognition: “Jesus!”

I was flattered, but I cannot think off-hand of a more profoundly wrong case of mistaken identity.

Kent G. BudgeOctober 22, 2013

My wife shepherded a young woman through Activity Days many years back. One or two of the girl’s sisters became pregnant out of wedlock. Her brother fathered a child out of wedlock. The girl served a mission, married in the temple, and continues to do well. My wife gets a card on all the big occasions. There are tears of joy.

I cannot think of any young person I have significantly influenced for good. I think it must be a defect in my character.